Informative Solar

Possible futures for clean technology manufacturing and trade: opportunities for emerging economies Governments are grappling with the need to establish secure, resilient and sustainable supply chains for clean technologies while at the same time ensuri...

🌟 Scientists design bioinspired hydrogels that mimic plant photosynthesis for clean hydrogen energy production.

🌅A new hydrogel developed by Japanese scientists uses sunlight to efficiently produce hydrogen from water, mimicking natural photosynthesis. This innovation promises to enhance clean energy production by improving efficiency and reducing costs, potentially replacing current technologies with a more sustainable solution.

🌎 Artificial Photosynthesis Renewable Energy Technology

🌅 Scientists have long aspired to replicate how plants convert sunlight into energy, hoping to create sustainable energy solutions. Artificial photosynthesis, the process of using sunlight to drive clean energy-producing reactions, aims to imitate this natural method. Yet, achieving a synthetic system that functions as smoothly as photosynthesis has been a major challenge—until now.

Artificial Photosynthesis Breakthrough: Revolutionary Gel Turns Sunlight Directly Into Clean Fuel Scientists design bioinspired hydrogels that mimic plant photosynthesis for clean hydrogen energy production. A new hydrogel developed by Japanese scientists uses sunlight to efficiently produce hydrogen from water, mimicking natural photosynthesis. This innovation promises to enhance clean energy

🌄 Escalating utility rates are a pressing challenge that real estate professionals can’t afford to ignore. Based on these findings, we recommend that real estate owners and managers reassess the escalation rates in their models, adjusting for regional variations and industry-specific risks. While changing the assumed rate from 2% to closer to 2.5% (or even higher in certain regions) may seem like a minor tweak, it can have a profound effect on long-term financial planning.

Utility rate escalation is trending up according to new study A new study shows that utility rates in commercial real estate are escalating at a faster pace, making the case for solar power investments.

🌎As world leaders gather in Baku, Azerbaijan for COP29, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) is attending for the first time, lending its voice and expertise to this urgent conversation. Alongside its global counterparts, will offer guidance on how to proactively and responsibly manage the growing renewables industry, from strengthening supply chains and opening international markets to securing critical minerals and expanding storage adoption.

🌅...To meet this goal, global renewable energy capacity needs to grow to 11 terawatts and about 60% can come from global solar capacity. To stay on track, over the next six years the United States needs to install an extra 30 gigawatts of solar capacity over current expectations. If the world reaches this goal, U.S. solar will represent about 9% of global renewable energy capacity.

🌟 This target is achievable because the U.S. solar market has been booming since the Inflation Reduction Act passed two years ago. Since then, solar module manufacturing has quadrupled, deployment has surged, and, over the next 5 years, the U.S. solar and storage industry is expected to add at least 200 GW of new solar capacity, nearly the same amount of solar that we currently have installed today...

America’s New Role at COP29: Global Solar Champion Last year, world leaders gathered in Dubai for the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP), the most consequential annual conference on global climate change.   Clean energy has played a central...

🌎“Our updated hosting capacity map provides developers every month with near real-time information about solar projects in the development queue, which is key to identifying the best available location to interconnect their project to our grid,” said Mark Baranek, senior vice president of Technical Services, ComEd.

🌞 The 1,976 Distributed Energy Resource (DER) systems that ComEd completed in October represented 42 megawatts of DER generation capacity, a new one-month record. There are approximately 1,160 MW of DER interconnected to the ComEd system, including 460 MW from residential solar systems, 285 MW from community solar and more than 345 MW from commercial systems. ComEd estimates that solar power on its grid will grow to 2,700 MWs by 2030.

🌟 The high volume of solar and other DER, including batteries and electric vehicles, places a priority on providing solar developers access to current hosting capacity data, which is used to estimate the amount of DER that can be safely and reliably accommodated without major upgrades to the ComEd distribution system.yÿ

ComEd updates capacity maps every month to drive more solar projects To streamline solar projects in ComEd’s northern Illinois region, the utility debuted a new hosting capacity map that is updated every month.

🌅 Addressing durability and efficiency concerns for solar panels will go a long way toward making the tech more desirable and cost-effective for governments, companies, and consumers who are looking to install panels of their own.

🌄 LONGi is confident that its tech will become the worldwide standard for solar power and is setting its sights high.

☀️"We firmly believe that [it] will become the dominant force in crystalline silicon cells, including both bifacial and monofacial designs," said chairman Zhong Baoshen.

Company develops solution to boost efficiency and longevity of solar panels — here's how it could transform the future of energy The stats on the Hi-MO X10 are impressive.

🌄 On average, 1 acre of solar panels can produce about 350-450 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity per year, depending on panel efficiency and sunlight availability. A typical U.S. household consumes around 10-11 MWh of electricity per year.

🌅 Using these figures, 1 acre of solar panels could power approximately 32 to 45 average U.S. homes annually. The number could be higher or lower based on regional differences in sunlight and energy consumption patterns. For instance, areas with more direct sunlight and efficient solar panels may yield more electricity, thus powering more homes, while areas with less sunlight would result in lower energy production.

How many homes would an acre of solar panels power? The efficiency of solar panels depends on factors such as the quality of the materials, the angle and orientation of the panels, the amount of sunlight received,

🌄 U.S. solar company Suniva has started producing cells at its Georgia factory and is shipping them to customers, executives told Reuters, calling it a milestone in the effort to build a robust domestic solar supply chain.
🌅 U.S. manufacturing of solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity and are assembled into solar panels, had vanished for years due to competition from low priced imports, and Suniva is the first to resume commercial U.S. production of the silicon-based components.

Solar manufacturer Suniva resumes production of American-made cells U.S. solar company Suniva has started producing cells at its Georgia factory and is shipping them to customers, executives told Reuters, calling it a milestone in the effort to build a robust domestic solar supply chain.

🌄 Experience the future of energy at India's first solar dome museum, inaugurated on November 5, 2024, by Firhad Hakim. This revolutionary hub, located beside Eco Park's Gate 6, offers insightful explorations into renewable energy, within an impressive 27-meter-tall, 45-meter-diameter structure spread across 2.89 acres.

https://curlytales.com/in-a-first-kolkatas-new-town-gets-a-solar-dome-museum-all-about-indias-first-renewable-energy-museum/

🌅 The U.S. solar market is booming, driven by the growing demand for clean, renewable energy sources. Solar electricity currently accounts for nearly half of all new utility-scale power generation added to the nation's grid.

☀️ As governmental policies and the demand for non-polluting energy continue to escalate, annual solar capacity additions are projected to grow from nearly 39 gigawatts (GW) in 2024 to approximately 67 GW by 2033 – a remarkable compound annual growth rate of 6.3%.

Imperative for Universal Solar Energy The U.S. solar market is booming, driven by the growing demand for clean, renewable energy sources. Solar electricity currently accounts for nearly half of a...

WASHINGTON D.C. — Following is a statement from Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA):

“America’s solar and storage industry is unleashing abundant, homegrown energy that is creating jobs and delivering affordable, reliable power to every home and business in this country. I want to congratulate President-elect Trump on his election victory and look forward to working closely with his incoming administration to ensure the solar and storage industry, as well as the domestic manufacturing renaissance we’ve seen over the last few years, continue to thrive and play a vital role in America’s energy economy...

Solar and Storage Industry Statement on 2024 Election Results WASHINGTON D.C. — Following is a statement from Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA): “America’s solar and storage industry is unleashing abundant, homegrown energy that is creating...

🌅 One of the common themes of solar sales is that a solar array will increase the value of a home, and studies show this to be true when the solar array is purchased (see below). But “the common miscue or misrepresentation is when solar companies that use leases as a mechanism to sell solar claim that leased solar increases the value of a home,” says Worthington. “There’s a lot of money in leases.”

☀️ This is especially relevant after the rise in interest rates the past few years. As a result, purchase loans became more expensive while leases became a more popular option for solar adoption.

🌄 Other details about the rewards of going solar also may be glossed over by some solar salespersons. “What some homeowners have been told by a solar rep and what they were finding out later were two completely different things — things like they were going to get more power offset, or that their utility bill was going to be less, or that they would qualify for tax credits,” says Worthington.

Solar leases do not add to home value. Do your customers know? Solar and/or storage that is leased, financed by a PACE tax lien cannot be considered to add value to a home, according to Freddy Mac.

🌅 Traditional single-junction solar cells are limited by two fundamental losses: (1) they cannot absorb photons with energy lower than the semiconductor's bandgap, and (2) photons with energies above the bandgap generate excess energy that is ultimately lost as heat. Tandem solar cells address these limitations by combining two or more junctions with different bandgaps, allowing them to capture a broader range of the solar spectrum while minimizing energy losses.

🌄 The choice of materials for the top and bottom junctions is crucial for optimizing the performance of tandem solar cells. Ideally, the materials should have complementary bandgaps, high efficiencies when used as single-junction devices, and similar manufacturing costs. Additionally, the top junction should be as transparent as possible to allow sub-bandgap photons to reach the bottom junction.

Tandem Solar Cells: The Future of Photovoltaic Power Advancing Tandem Solar Cell Efficiency for a Sustainable Energy Future

🌅 When energy sources are discussed, solar and wind often go together like a high school couple whose identities seem to have fused. Supporters hail them as the twin solutions to both the environmental crisis and the domination of fossil fuel markets by hostile countries, whereas opponents dismiss them as too variable, too expensive, and too diffuse to do any good.

🌄 Now, however, it is becoming increasingly recognized that solar will likely be the world’s main source of energy in the next decade and probably thereafter. Meanwhile, wind power still provides more of the world’s electricity, and continues to grow, but at a much slower rate.

Why Is This Solar Power's Time In The Sun But Wind Hitting Turbulence? For fifty years, solar and wind power have been promoted or mocked together – but now one looks set to dominate electricity production, while the other is growing much more slowly.

🌅 Perovskite solar cells are composed of multiple layers, each with different thermal expansion properties. This mismatch in thermal expansion can lead to mechanical stress at the interfaces between the layers, resulting in degradation and eventual failure of the solar cell, particularly under thermal cycling conditions.

🌄 To overcome this challenge, the researchers turned to nature's ingenious design: chiral structures. Chirality refers to the geometric property of an object that is not superimposable on its mirror image, much like our hands. These chiral structures are ubiquitous in nature, from the double helix of DNA to the intricate structures of proteins, and they exhibit remarkable strength and elasticity.

Solving The Achilles Heel Of Perovskite Solar Cells Through Nature’s Chiral Strength Among the various solar cell technologies, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have garnered significant attention due to their high efficiency…

🌄 No one needs convincing that the future features a great deal of solar energy. As well as being better for the climate and energy security, solar and wind are now the cheapest ways to add electricity generation in almost every country.

☀️ But traditional silicon solar cells are bumping up against their efficiency limit of around 26 per cent sunlight converted into electrical energy.

🌅“We’re in the middle of the last wave of solar dying, whether that be in Europe due to Chinese competition or in the US due to the failure of some of the new thin-film PV companies,” Oxford PV CEO David Ward tells Euronews Green.

☀️ There has been little to challenge the incumbent position of silicon in the last decade - which is often the minimum time that it takes for a new hard tech innovation to break through.

Inside the Oxford lab cooking up the next generation of solar cells Rooftops and ‘flying wings’ could be fitted with these more powerful perovskite-on-silicon solar panels.